No need to inhale

Texas lawmakers should do more to put the kibosh on smoking, especially by youth.

Copyright 2016: Houston Chronicle

February 18, 2016

While many states scored poorly, Texas was one of eight states to receive straight Fs on the American Lung Association's 2016 tobacco control report. Linked to more than 24,500 deaths in Texas annually, smoking is the No. 1 preventable cause of death in Texas, as it is in the U.S. The direct medical expenses of smoking, loss of workplace productivity and premature death costs Texas more than $20 billion annually, according to the Texas Medical Association.

Adults who want to quit need access to help to, and teenagers should have more information to keep them from starting. Yet, we fund a paltry 5 percent of the amount recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for tobacco prevention and cessation programs.

Although Houston along with 45 other Texas cities has passed a comprehensive smoke-free workplace ordinance, according to Smoke-Free Texas, a coalition of public health organizations,is no comprehensive statewide ban exists.

Our Legislature has failed to act even though a preponderance of evidence links indoor second-hand smoke to health problems like heart disease, and the lack of a ban leaves many Texans who need to earn a paycheck exposed to second-hand smoke's harmful effects.

The report is particularly troubling in regard to our youth.

There's been a nationwide reduction in youth cigarette smoking - an almost 42 percent decline in high school smoking rates since 2011 - but they have started using other tobacco products, including e-cigarettes and hookahs, at skyrocketing rates. Nearly 1 in 4 high school students in the U.S. use at least one tobacco product, and more than 50 percent of the youth who use tobacco products report using two or more tobacco products, according to the report.

Young people who use more than one tobacco product are at greater risk for becoming addicted to nicotine and may be more likely to continue to use tobacco products as adults. The sale of e-cigarettes to youth under 18 is banned in Texas, but we could do more. We could make tobacco products less affordable, a particularly effective way to keep youth from starting to smoke, and the state could, in a broader scope, put more effort into curbing tobacco use.

The Lung Association's report tells us what we already know. The question for lawmakers is: What will they do about it?

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